“America's Golden Age begins now. » When he made this proclamation in his inauguration speech on Monday, January 20, Donald Trump was referring to a period he loves. Nicknamed “The Gilded Age”, literally “the golden age”, in toc, where brilliance hides poverty, this American period followed the Civil War (1861-1865). It was made of incredible fortunes, industrial empires, widespread political corruption, violent social struggles, segregation in the South, and a subjugated press.
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The person who embodies this period is President William McKinley (1897-1901), who was assassinated in 1901 and whose successor was the American icon Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909). After the populist Andrew Jackson (1829-1837), general of modest origins born in Appalachia, anti-establishment and promoter of the movement of Native Americans, put forward during the first term, McKinley is on the way to becoming the reference of the second term Trump.
-In his inauguration speech, Mr. Trump paid tribute to him, announcing that he would “restore the name of a great president, William McKinley, who made us very rich”by giving its name back to the highest peak in the United States, in Alaska, which peaks at 6,190 meters above sea level. Mount McKinley was renamed Denali in 2015 by Barack Obama, as desired by Native Americans.
Protectionist and imperialist
William McKinley is both a great protectionist and a great imperialist, as Donald Trump aims to be by wanting to conquer Greenland and regain control of the Panama Canal. At his instigation, when McKinley was a senator from Ohio, the United States introduced tariffs in 1890 that rose on average from 38% to nearly 50%, and he increased them again once elected president. Donald Trump dreams of this model, which made it possible to finance more than half of the federal budget. “When we were an intelligent country, in the 1890s – that's when the country was relatively the richest in its history – there were all the customs duties [imaginables]. There was no income tax »Mr. Trump said during the election campaign.
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